Manuel Pellegrini: Real Madrid Deserved A Draw Against Barcelona

Real Madrid stumbled to a 1-0 defeat at Barcelona in Sunday evening’s hugely anticipated El Clasico showdown, despite putting up a brave fight and taking the game to the Blaugrana.

Merengues coach, Manuel Pellegrini believed his side were on top of their bitter rivals, although he admitted that the ‘Men In White’ could have done better.

“ Barcelona are always very complicated when they are playing at home because they always hold on to possession,” he began his post-match press conference.

“I think we could have made a difference in the 90 minutes. We had plenty of chances. We’re not happy when we don’t get the result we are looking for, but we attacked them enough, we maintained our level throughout, and we put a lot of pressure on them. We just didn’t have enough possession."

Ibra scored just minutes after replacing Thierry Henry, but Pellegrini does not believe that the big Swede influenced Barca’s style of play.

“Ibra took his chance well,” he acknowledged. “It was important for them that he scored straight away, but whether or not he was playing, we should’ve done better. He didn’t change Barca’s game that much. They never had total control of the match, eventhough they had more possession.”

When asked what would’ve been a just result, Pellegrini didn’t hesitate: “A draw would have been fair. We were superior. They didn’t have that many shots."

“On the other hand, we had a couple of very clear chances, from Cristiano Ronaldo and Marcelo for instance, and on the counter, we had time and space but we couldn’t score. They scored first, but then they didn’t have that many opportunities other than Lionel Messi’s late chance."

The Chilean trainer then explained why Ronaldo had to be withdrawn after 65 minutes.

“He was only authorised to play for an hour the most. Anything beyond that and it wouldn’t have been irresponsible on our behalf. He played as well as he could."

“We improved a lot tonight, but we needed a bit more patience. We could’ve tied the game in the second half when it was 11 against 10.”

When he was questioned by a journalist if it was the correct decision to bring on Raul when they had a man advantage instead of another player who could speed up the attack, Pellegrini simply shot back, “That’s your opinion.”